Grappa

Grappa is a classic spirit that is often found in the back of your bar cabinet, but now’s the time to dig it out. It is becoming the fashionable spirit to mix in a cocktail. Grappa is also the alternative digestive to cognac.

Grappa is a fragrant, clear, grape-based brandy of Italian origin made by distilling the debris left in the press after grapes have yielded up their precious juice. The debris is called pomace and consists of skins, seeds and dry pulp.

The flavour of grappa, like that of wine, depends on the type and quality of the grape used as well the specifics of the distillation process. Grappa used to be known as a cheap, portable form of central heating for peasants in northern Italy, made by traveling distillers or by industrial outfits like Stock, the Trieste brandy manufacturer. Too often it was a cheap, ill-made product, an Italian version of white lightning.

A shot after dinner helped ward off the damp, misty cold that often settles over the Alpine foothills and the flatlands just beneath them. And a shot in the breakfast espresso — yielding a ''corretto,'' or corrected coffee — got the human motor started in the morning gloom.

Its clarity indicates it is an un-aged distillate, though some may retain very faint pigments from the original fruit pomace. In recent years, aged grappas have become more common, and these take on a yellow, or red-brown hue from the barrels in which they are stored.

Finally, if you believe grappa has a strong alcohol content, it is not true. Usually the minimum is 37.5 percent, and most grappas are 40 to 45 percent.

FIRST MORNING

(because traditionally this is when you would drink grappa in your coffee)

35ml Moscato grappa
15ml Cointreau
15ml Amaretto
15 to 20 raisins
1 tsp caster sugar
1 shot of espresso
Garnish  3 coffee beans

Place the raisins into a shaker with the sugar and gently muddle. Add the grappa, Cointreau, amaretto and espresso. Shake hard until the drink becomes frothy. Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with three coffee beans. This should look like a frothy coffee.

CHOCOLATE TRUFFLE MARTINI

35ml vodka
25ml grappa
20ml white creme de cacao
half tsp white truffle paste

Place the vodka, grappa, white creme de cacao and white truffle paste into a shaker. Shake then strain into a chilled martini glass.

A glass of Grappa

Glass of grappa - photo by Carsten Tolkmit